1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to an object tracking system for tracking objects within dynamic environments.
2. Background Art
In virtualized and cloud computing environments, a virtualized machine or server instance needs to be started in order for hosted software on the virtualized machine/server instance to run. One such type of hosted software is a monitoring tool for the environment, which may be used to track an object, such as a virtual machine, and the object's genealogy created after entrance to the environment's domain. The monitoring tool may be useful to assist performance tracking tools obtain performance information about the virtual environment. The monitoring tool is not notified prior to the entrance or exit of the object within the environment, such as the starting, cloning, or stopping of the virtual machine. Since the attributes of the object are unknown to the monitoring tool upon entrance to the environment, the monitoring tool is unable to maintain tracking of the object once the object has exited and reentered the environment, such as the virtual machine having stopped and restarted. Each time a virtual machine is started, it is assigned a new Internet Protocol (IP) address and host name. As a result, it is difficult for the monitoring tool to track the environment across multiple starts, stops, and new instances.
Prior developers have sought to address this issue by placing their own monitoring system on top of the environment, requiring all communication to first pass through the monitoring system in order to detect when objects, such as virtual machine instances, are stopped, started, and copied/cloned. However, this approach introduces a bottleneck into the data flow and restricts the applicability of the monitoring system to only those environments with monitoring system interface support.
Accordingly, there is a need for methods, systems, and computer program products to provide an object tracking system that persists across and within dynamic environments.
The present disclosure will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. Generally, the drawing in which an element first appears is typically indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number.